Forecast for the Future

"Every individual without exception bears a potential writer within himself. The reason is that everyone has trouble accepting the fact that he will disappear unheard of and unnoticed in an indifferent universe, and everyone wants to make himself into a universe of words before it's too late.

Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not that far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding."

- Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Monday, March 30, 2009

I will elaborate more on this in a few days, but next month my Hyperliving focus will be on FOOD. The Master Cleanse I did earlier this month really got me thinking a lot more about the importance of eating healthily (and economically sensibly), and I have tried hard since then to consider more carefully what I choose to eat, but in April I will go deeper into examining what I choose to eat and how to make better decisions that include eating healthier food, cooking more, and spending less money on it all.

At least two structured weeks for the month will include a week of being vegetarian, to consider the art of gourmet cuisine sans meat, and a week of only raw foods for a tough challenge (and since I already did the vegan thing). I am also going to keep a log all month of all the foods I consume and will evaluate them in a yet-to-be-determined fashion. I'm concerned about going too deeply as far as calorie counts go since my goal is NOT to lose weight or even start thinking about that kind of decision-making; however, I will do some research into plainly unhealthy food parts that I just want to work on cutting down or avoiding (high fructose corn syrup###), MSG and bad cholesterols. Also on the radar if I can possibly fit it in will be a week of trying new foods, possibly in new locations across New York, but it will be a bit of a challenge since I will be spending six days in Berlin for work in the middle of the month. But these days, I like challenges.

So yes yes, Here's to Food!

NOTES:### - Please watch the video for the high fructose corn syrup link if you haven't seen it already. This is one of a series of commercials the corn industry is pumping now to attempt to re-dupe consumers who finally are beginning to figure out the dangers and general unhealthiness of HFCS. Some have drawn parallels to ads shown years ago made by the Tobacco Industry to downplay the harmful effects of cigarettes and nicotine, and truly, though HFCS doesn't approach that level of badness, there is more or less no difference in the greed-driven amorality of it.

As I reach the end of a month of supposed "restoration", I can say that right now I am feeling pretty good. I have come out of this month feeling like I did a nice job taking a look again at various aspects of my life and ways to strengthen and improve the choices I make. I am glad that I quit smoking this year, but the rest of my health needs to come too, and over the course of this month I re-established an exercise routine (including not only biking but also joining a basketball league), re-evaluated my eating habits, and reconfiguring my spending decisions--all to not just strong but manageable degrees of success.

I also tried once again to work on my sleep schedule but that one is a work in progress that will take some time to fix. I am beginning to speculate though that regular, semi-heavy exercise will help make this happen. I know that eventually something will have to give, but I am generally impressed with the resolve to live crazyily that has allowed me to continue surviving (thriving? dunno) without semi-human sleep patterns.

Everything that happened to me and which I did in the past month is all a part of the larger plan to turn Ben Scheim into a more sensible and productive human being, and I have confidence that I am both moving in the right direction and strong enough to see it all through.

Despite weather talk making me think I would spend most of the weekend indoors, the rain largely stayed away on Saturday and I'm happy to report that I again biked about 80 miles this weekend, on two nearly-identical 38 mile rides.

Also, I meant to have mentioned it earlier this week, but on Monday I decided to set the somewhat arbitrary goal that I would bike 1500 miles by the end of September. This number seems pretty big, but it's actually pretty modest, and after this weekend, I'm already up to 230 miles for the year since my first big ride on March 14. Considering that I plan to do at least two "centuries" (the Montauk in May and NYC in September) and that I theoretically plan to bike to work 4-5 days a week this summer, I should have no trouble hitting this goal and may even be able to strive for as many as 2500 or so.

Hilariously--given my general obsessive craziness with numbers and quantification--I still don't have a computer for my bike, but this has turned into good fortune as not having one spurred me to decide that it would be a good idea to start a log to track all of the rides I take this summer. That way I will know exactly how many I've taken and how far I've gone, the routes I've taken and who I may have ridden with. I'll be interested in check out my monthly/weekendly ride totals, as well as the percentages I ride to certain places and with certain people, so I'm very curious to see how things will turn out.

Friday, March 27, 2009

So last night I again went to bed **relatively** early, around 12:40. Small victories, people.

And then tonight I had another run-in with some beer and the booze won. Doorknobs, Jayson and I went to Mugs to have bar food and bro time and some wings, a burger and one higher proof stout later, we came home to get ready to go out at see Ladyhawke at Studio B. Except that within 30 minutes of being home I first passed out in an armchair and then on the nearby couch.

Of course, now it's 1:40 and I'm wide awake (after having just finished watching a wonderful albeit a little dated Sutherland-Fonda curio called Klute***), so obviously I'm not "in-need-of-rest, on-the-verge-of-collapse", but nonetheless I'm a little concerned over how quickly and absolutely sleep seemed to overtake me both tonight and on Tuesday. It's probably a testament to the general insanity in my life for this to be a concern, but I seem to be able rely on a certain type of regularity of my physical and mental functioning and any "disturbances in the force" tend to trouble me until I'm able to suss out what's going on. Still, i'm not ridiculous enough to suggest that feeling tired and a need to sleep at night time should be deemed strange enough to cause me alarm... but let's just say i'm "monitoring the situation". Or whatever.

NOTES:***- I would strongly suggest checking out Klute if you haven't already (it's available through Netflix's Watch Instantly service, hint hint). It is yes, a little "dated", but there's also something fresh and almost anachronistic about the frankness of Jane Fonda's character and some of the feelings and attitudes she displays. Sutherland is also strange and good as he often is, and possibly of most significance is the score, which is both frightening and forward-looking. Check out for yourself.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Last night I fell asleep on the couch watching basketball at around 10pm. Probably the three beers I'd had helped pilot me toward dreamland but it was sleep nonetheless. It is nice to be up and showered at 7:40 am with time to lounge around write blog posts about how nice it is to be awake.

Monday, March 23, 2009

On a somewhat more successful non-sleep related front, I got my bike tires replaced on Monday*** and this weekend I rode 78 miles--42 on Saturday with a friend and 36 on Sunday by myself. I felt pretty good for just my second weekend out (after last weekend's 60 miler on Saturday). On Saturday I could have kept going for much longer, but on Sunday I definitely felt the burn. For sure though, I feel well on my way to doing the full 100 miles at the Montauk Century in May.

I basically took the same route each day: beginning at home, heading to Central Park via Greenpoint>Queens>59 St bridge, then cutting across town over 60 St into the park. I did two and half Central Park road loops before exiting during the third at 100 St & Central Park West and heading west across town to the Greenway to make my way downtown (Sunday's route varied by exiting the park at the end of my second loop at 59 St and heading across town there to the Greenway). From the Greenway, I traveled south to Warren St and cut across town to head over the Brooklyn Bridge for Prospect Park, where I did one loop before heading home through Fort Greene.

It was a very nice ride that was relatively stop free, minus crossing town in lower Manhattan and again in Brooklyn on the other side of the bridge. I've noticed recently that as I've begun traveling faster and faster during my exercise rides--work commutes and leisurely rides aside--I've become more and more aware of the general annoyance of stopping and sitting at lights, and particularly my disinterest in doing so. I take this as a relatively good sign about my commitment to pushing myself, but it's also frustrating as I become more aware of the fact that it is difficult to ride in New York, generally speaking, without spending a good amount of time sitting at lights. But then, I guess questing after "the best" routes is part of the fun of biking here anyway, so on with it then.

Went to bed a little earlier last night, around 1:15 am. Admittedly this is not early for most people, but starting small is probably the only way I'm going to achieve any success on these fronts when my typical bed time is between 3 and 4 am.

It's hilarious to me how going to sleep earlier seems like the hardest thing I could try doing (harder, for example, than not smoking or even not eating), but it's just a testament to how much desire plays into will power. That is, I really really do NOT want to go to bed, generally. I am willing to spend my waking hours under a variety of compromised states so long as they are waking; but give me consciousness or give me death, I guess.

My theory is that the only way I am going to get around this mentality is by simply adjusting myself to wake up earlier and begin using the early morning as more of a tool for living than I do currently. However, I think that my goal is supposed to include generally sleeping "more" rather than just sleeping at different hours, so we'll have to see how I can make this work. But I think getting up on Saturdays at 8am to go biking is a good start.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

One short point: I feel inclined to also mention that despite the conclusion of February as a month of activity, Slang Editorial continues to run actively and updated on a (near) daily basis. If you haven't already made the connection that there's actually more of my writing and bullshit ideas to follow over there, here's a gentle reminder: there is actually more of my writing and bullshit ideas to follow over there.

Of course, I can at this point only attest to the existence of quantity rather than quality, but whatever. And hey, as one friend said, "Give it a month." But for the time being the brain cylinders are once again firing and I am running with it.

So last week's attempt at going to bed early was pretty much a FAIL. I basically never adhered to the guidelines I'd attempted to follow, and worse, specially stayed up WAAY late half the nights.

The only positive developing so far has been, hilariously, the past two Friday nights, where I've gone to bed around 2--laughably early for a weekend night for me--so that I could wake up at 7:30 Saturday morning to go biking. Last Saturday I got up and biked 60 miles and today I biked about 45 and I'm feeling pretty good about both the exercise as well as the acknowledgment to myself that I really do need the rest if I'm gonna get up so early. This point may seem like an obvious one, but, for example, I did last year's 68 mile Montauk ride on about 90 minutes sleep... so really, no point is to obvious to make for me.

Maybe I just need to work backwards--start limiting myself and going to bed earlier on the weekends and THEN the week will follow.

Monday, March 16, 2009

This week, my goal for Monday-Thursday nights is to be in bed by 11:30 and asleep by midnight.

This is going to pose a hell of a challenge for me, but I know that I need to at least figure out how to improve my sleeping habits, if not change them entirely. I'm hoping to try and wake up early each morning and either go for a bike ride, but we'll just see how things progress. I'm more of a crazy idiot about sleep than anything else, and the only real achievement here will be figuring out some kind of balance here for the longterm--one workweek of better sleep hours isn't going to do much for me. But we'll just have to see.

The bike action is happening again, in full force; I shall be fit or else.

I went out for my first legit ride of the year on Saturday, a 40 miler from Columbus Circle, which came out to about 60 miles of riding including the trips to and from Columbus Circle and the additional trip from home to the 59 St Apple Store and back. My right thigh gave out from a cramp while going home over the 59 St bridge the first time and for the first time I felt truly exhausted, but within an hour my legs seemed to have rebounded, as I felt more or less totally fine. It was overall a tremendously satisfying feeling of exhaustion.

I tried to go out again for a ride today but noticed that my rear wheel apparently has a flat. I attempted to change the tube but instead spent hours determining that I literally could not. I somehow got the tire off the wheel and patched the leak, but then popped the tube as I struggled to get the tire bead back in place, and then from there was completely unable to get the tire off again. So tough did it become that I broke three tire levels in the process, leading even extreme do-it-yourselfer Mark Jaffe to proclaim the tire unchangeable. And so instead I proceeded to watch SEVEN STRAIGHT HOURS of NBA basketball, of which I enjoyed nearly every minute.

Now I have to try and get the bike to a shop tomorrow, somehow, but it's considerably more difficult to do so during the week when I struggle to get home at reasonable hours. Any non-standard hour jobbed friends want to help a brother out?

Monday, March 9, 2009

So I made it through a rather challenging week one and I feel absolutely great. I’m very much a man of slingshot euphoria but nonetheless my whole being feels in tune with the world right now.

I’m utilizing this good feeling to begin making some plans for the now and soon-down-the-road, including getting geared up for some rad bikes: Montauk Century most importantly--and its weekly pre-race training rides--the 5 Boro Ride and anything else I can do (though honestly, i am interested in doing group rides that don't cost money--the Montauk ride is fun and all, but $70 is a bummer just for the privilege of riding my bike).

But also though, I'm making plans this week to streamline and improve the efficiency and quality of my life, beginning with physical health. Making plans for biking is just part of an overall desire to get fitter, happier and more productive. I have decided that once it gets warm I am going to forgo the monthly MetroCard and bike to work all summer, as well as--much much bigger stretches--begin incorporating some other activity like more walking and maybe even some weight lifting or running. Additionally, next week's activity is going to focus specifically on trying to address my inhuman sleep patterns, which is to say that there are none other than "sleep as little as I can allow myself".

My last goal for the month, which will come into play again down the road, is an evaluation of my (often questionable) financial decision-making. At the recommendation of Ben D, I opened an account on Mint.com to help put my finances in perspective and already it's become crystal clear to me that I need to redress my old habit patterns with new and improved ones. Starting Monday I began making my lunch every day and have devised a number of other simple and immediate ways to slowly maximize my geld-possibilities and increase my opportunities for unexpected excitement or financial-lifeprotection at a future turn down the road.

So....it's on, as they say. The competition against myself to keep making my life better and not accept the status quo (even if it is a more favorable status quo than say, a year ago). Last year I stopped treading water and started swimming toward shore, and now that I've decided which land to swim toward it's time to make some real plans and put them in motion. There are many new possibilities swimming in my head but I feel like I finally am getting a sense now how I might be able to see them to fruition.

It’s 3pm on day 6 and I am feeling better than I’ve felt all week. After a great test last night—my friend cooked “dinner” (steak!!) for Doorknobs and I; I drank tea—I am happy to report that life is good and I feel like a little more than a million bucks.

I got to work at 8:50 am (after crawling in at 10 every other day this week) and have had full concentration and motivation abilities all day long. I smell the end of this trial and am finally not lusting after food I cannot have. Maybe it’s the amazing weather--I am look forward to taking a bike ride tomorrow.

So I’m pretty thoroughly struggling to concentrate well right now, and I’m quite hungry. Delicious items of food are popping into my head and I am imagining what it will be like to eat them again. Yum. I am glad I have only one more day of work to make it through…

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

The waning Day 2 is coming to a close and Day 3 will begin in a few hours. So far ok.

What's noteworthy right now though is that I just watched the recent Herzog film Rescue Dawn and it is truly great. The story of this character, Dieter Dengler, a Navy pilot who is shot down and captured in Vietnam in '65, is a totally insane one... but then on top of that, it was also a little crazy to spend two hours watching a story about starving soldiers. Those balls of rice. God.

2)"[Don't] roll out of bed in the morning and decide that this would be a good day to start a 10 day detox. This is a recipe for failure."

3)"Get yourself a brand new notebook, and write down all the benefits you will receive by going on this diet.Do Not Censor Yourself."

4)"If you're into that stuff,you can watch slasher films or professional wresting if that's what it takes to keep your mind off food."

5)"Rid your house of all potential traps:you might think you have the will power to not eat that package of thin mint cookies now, but7 days into the diet I guarantee them cookies will be calling out to you in your sleep, and having to look at them every time you go into the kitchen will be maddening."

Luckily for me, I:

1) got a fucking court summonson Saturdayfor mounting my bike on the sidewalk in front of my house

2)roll out of bed EVERY daythinking I could start a 10 day cleanse (or a 10 day binge, for that matter)

3) wasgiven a curious but niftyAnna Sui notepad on Sunday from someone's left over Fashion Week swag

JeffreyBeaumont: "After finishing the Cleanse, avoid meats and milk fora while. Milk can mess up your stomach during this process and meat isvery hard for the stomach to digest. Both of these should be avoided forat least a couple weeks after coming off of the Lemonade Diet."jaychampionvinyl: guhjaychampionvinyl: I really can't believe you're doing thisjaychampionvinyl: Alex and I were bonding over how retardo this is todayjaychampionvinyl: hahahahajaychampionvinyl: "The Lemonade Diet"jaychampionvinyl: THE LEMONADE....DIETJeffreyBeaumont: i am just hoping there's some way in which doing thiswill lead to me getting a court summonsjaychampionvinyl: HAHAHjaychampionvinyl: failure to operate bike while nourished

Sunday, March 1, 2009

So it's been quiet on the Hyperliving front lately, but it hasn't been quiet at all on Slang Editorial, where I seem to have found a way to get back to pummeling the internets with useless bullshit on music, basketball and world movement.

In March for Hyperliving I am looking into ways to "restore" myself. I'm beginning with the master cleanse:

The Master Cleanse works just how it sounds; you consume primarily lemonade for the entire time you're on the diet. So the recipes for the diet itself are fairly simple. You should drink a minimum of 60 oz of lemonade a day, but can drink more if you like. You can also drink as much water as you want. I suggest you consume your body weight in ounces of water.

Below are two different recipes. The first is for a single serving of the master cleanse lemonade. The second will make 6 servings

Now I say straight out that I am not the sort of person who EVER does things like this for "restoration", or anything else. But i've had a few friends do it lately and I feel like, eh, why not give it a try. My plan is to go seven days and I've nearly finished the first.

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Hyperliving 2008 Was...

A maximalist approach to "living right":- To live each week of 2008 committed to a singular task and see it through.- To complete these tasks as best I can; and when completion is not possible, to reflect momentarily and then continue moving forward onto the next task.- To not be tripped up by fear or uncertainty.- To not be deterred by failure, because the only failure in this game is giving up.- To blog the shit out of this thing until I can blog no more.